


Never and Always

by Threshie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Development, Forgiveness, Guilty Dean Winchester, Heavy Angst, M/M, Post-Leviathans (Supernatural), Post-Purgatory (Supernatural), Regret, Self-Hatred, Temporary Character Death, Thoughts on Cas over the years (and seasons)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 13:29:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21209327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Threshie/pseuds/Threshie
Summary: Dean looks back on how he’s treated Cas over the years, and he’s got a lot of regrets.





	Never and Always

Dean will never forgive himself.

Castiel had come into his life as a powerful, celestial being, something demons feared, something with the mojo to swoop in and pluck his soul right out of Hell itself and return him to life on Earth.

Something. A thing. Dean had gotten to know the angel over the years, and began to think of him as a friend, but Cas was still odd and quirky and…well, definitely not human. 

Inhuman was technically the right term, but that felt too close to calling him a monster. Dean didn’t think of Cas as a BAD thing, but he definitely thought of the angel as a thing. A not-human thing, something other. 

For years, Cas was one of the strongest, the most fearsome, the most ruthless soldiers Dean had ever met. Everything else treated him as such. At least until the day Cas asked for Dean’s help, and Dean thought the plan was ridiculous. Tap Purgatory for extra soul power? Did that really seem like a bright idea?

Still, Cas spoke to him with his clear blue eyes and his perfect frowning face, and he said that he was Dean’s friend. That he always came when Dean called for him. And it was true. So when Cas asked for Dean to stand by him, just this once, and Dean had to turn him down, Dean expected the solemn soldier look and maybe some annoyance. 

What he did not expect was the betrayal in the angel’s eyes. What he didn’t expect was for Cas, a celestial, inhuman something, to look HURT. 

It was just the look, too. He didn’t argue with Dean, just looked like he’d had his heart ripped from his vessel’s chest, and then he was gone in a rustle of feathers. 

The next time Dean saw him, he’d gone through with an even worse plan, a desperate one since Dean refused to help him. He’d eaten all of the souls in Purgatory, souls of monsters — and of the Leviathans, which it turned out was more power than one angel could contain.

It killed him.

Dean watched him sink into the water and saw the dark stained trench coat float to the surface, and that was the moment that he knew, he’d never forgive himself. Cas wasn’t human, but he was a person — and it turned out he needed Dean, too, sometimes.

The years piled on after that. Cas returned somehow, although he couldn’t remember that he was Cas. He snapped out of it by smiting some demons, but then came taking back the damage he’d done by breaking down Sam’s wall to Hell memories. Before Dean could even talk to him again, Cas was out of his mind. 

It was hard to remember how much time had passed, especially because Dean was busy dodging the Leviathans the whole time so it felt like forever. Eventually, though, he had convinced Cas to help them take down Dick Roman.

And that was what landed them in Purgatory together. Purgatory, the endless string of killing and dying with a side of hunting relentlessly for his missing angel. 

He found Cas finally, just in time to basically leave without him. And Dean couldn’t accept that Cas had wanted that, so he blocked it out, replaced it with a story fit for his own self-loathing: he must have left Cas behind, and Cas must have called for him as he was abandoned. That was the only way Cas would end up still in Purgatory, right? 

Cas was a phantom after that. Dean saw glimpses of him in mirrors, or walking by the roadside in his tattered clothes, and the guilt threatened to swallow him whole, because HE did that. Dean had left him there, in that pit with no way out. What a way to repay him for pulling Dean from Hell.

And somehow, yet again, Cas came back. He just did one day, he came back, and he informed Dean that he’d remembered the exit from Purgatory wrong, and that was that. 

Except that Dean couldn’t forgive himself for all of this. Somewhere along the way, he’d gotten to know Castiel for who he was rather than what he was. The way he’d treated the angel in the past made him sick — he’d called on Cas to do things for him for cases whenever it was convenient, as if Cas hadn’t had better things to do. After all of that, after years of remaining loyally by Dean’s side, even after Purgatory, Dean was still letting him down over and over.

First he felt useless during the Trials Sam and Dean were doing, and Dean did nothing to include him. Cas wanted to fight, too, and as a result he’d ended up tricked into helping Metatron close Heaven off from all angels. They fell, Castiel along with them, and he’d had his grace cut out, leaving him human.

And again, Dean let him down. AGAIN. He was desperate to appease Ezekial, the angel helping to save Sam’s life, and he hadn’t had a choice. Cas, human Cas who had struggled so hard to reach them at the bunker that he’d been tortured and killed along the way, Dean sent him away. 

He sent him AWAY. Dean will never forgive himself how he handled it — he could have gotten Cas a place to stay, could’ve at least given him more than whatever money was in his wallet and done more than drop him off at the nearest bus station. 

Cas didn’t blame him for it, of course. Cas forgives everything too easily, never thinks it’s worth it to be angry about his own suffering. So Dean’s angry at himself, because Cas won’t be. And Cas may always forgive him, but Dean will never forgive himself.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading my fic! I wrote this during last year's NaNoWriMo, and forgot about it entirely until preparing my files for this year's NaNo, sooo here it is at last. Comments and kudos always appreciated!


End file.
